STEAM Actually comming to FRC, and im not happy

[jman4747]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Can you provide me any links towards art grants that are now accepting STEM applicants? The vast majority of this movement is happening in the other direction, including the Arts in STEM funding. The websites, literature, and rhetoric used is all about making sure Art is included in STEM, not allowing existing money for the Arts/Humanities to branch into STEM fields. Your robotics team suddenly isn't going to get to apply for a grant that's targeted for public murals or community theater, but graphic design programs are going to be able to compete against your robotics team for STEAM grants.

Here's some examples:
http://stemtosteam.org/
http://steam-notstem.com/
https://learningforward.org/learning...-stem-to-steam

And if you need more proof, here's House Resolution 51 (2014), which is explicitly about adding the Arts into Federal STEM funding.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-...-resolution/51

This is real. This is not a trivial matter. This isn't just an acronym change.

The point these sources seem to be making is that arts related education should take place in programs focused on promoting STEM higher education and careers.

Your concern is that these initiatives will allow programs solely focused on the arts and not promoting STEM higher education and careers, to receive funding meant for STEM programs.

Correct?

[Conor Ryan]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Can you provide me any links towards art grants that are now accepting STEM applicants? The vast majority of this movement is happening in the other direction, including the Arts in STEM funding. The websites, literature, and rhetoric used is all about making sure Art is included in STEM, not allowing existing money for the Arts/Humanities to branch into STEM fields. Your robotics team suddenly isn't going to get to apply for a grant that's targeted for public murals or community theater, but graphic design programs are going to be able to compete against your robotics team for STEAM grants.

Here's some examples:
http://stemtosteam.org/
http://steam-notstem.com/
https://learningforward.org/learning...-stem-to-steam

And if you need more proof, here's House Resolution 51 (2014), which is explicitly about adding the Arts into Federal STEM funding.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-...-resolution/51

This is real. This is not a trivial matter. This isn't just an acronym change.

It's like we should replace the A for Art with Architecture. And we don't mean just buildings, UX, and design are included too.


I'm on the RIBMEATS train too.

[bkahl]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Oh, this was serious... I thought this was gonna turn into a gif thread cuz that'd be art.

Does that make me an Artist?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyways. Let's toss up a hypothetical situation.

Let's say I am a member of an Artist's Forum. On this forum, a thread gets created entitled 'STEAM Award Com(m)ing to local Art Fair'. Let's also assume that a member of the community begins an outrage that Art is superior to everything related to STEM and that the two are completely unrelated and should never be used in the same sentence, acronym, or anything.

I dunno 'bout you, but that would rustle my jimmies a bit.

One of my good friends, a fellow 125 mentor, is an Art Teacher at a local elementary school. This Art Teacher just recently received a grant to get a 3D printer in her art classroom to help expose her students to using Technology to create Art. This teacher, who majored in Art in college, also now mentors elementary robotics teams across the Boston Area, bringing her creative and artistic mind to use when helping her students.

I won't speak for her, but I can only assume that if she read the sentiment about Art not having a place in FRC, it would come across offensive.

There is a place for Art in robotics, especially in FIRST. Art is used in digital media, Design of robots, and I know all of us have referred to a robot or two as a "Piece of Art". Various awards available to teams scream Art to me. Even technical awards, where a preferred mechanism is 'Elegant', means to me that some sort of creative artistic process must have happened to make the mechanism even just look good.

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Cole Cyr

almost entirely objective fields of Science Technology Engineering and Math
...

So i ask you, since this seems to be happening no matter what now, how do we incorporate such a subjective field into the FRC enviroment?

Some artists call a few swipes of a paint brush art.

Some engineers call a barely-tested, half-wired, slow-moving amalgamation of metal and electricity a competitive robot.

Don't kid yourself: it's all subjective. They're both application of and execution on the creative process, where "completed product" means different things to different people.

[Cole Cyr]

Originally Posted by JesseK

Some artists call a few swipes of a paint brush art.

Some engineers call a barely-tested, half-wired, slow-moving amalgamation of metal and electricity a competitive robot.

Don't kid yourself: it's all subjective. They're both application of and execution on the creative process, where "completed product" means different things to different people.

LOL, but the robot has to a accomplish a task where its effectiveness can be rated and therefore Objectively accessed where a piece of arts only task is to be appealing and that is subjective

[EricH]

You know what...

I find it totally hilarious that FIRST CA simply shares a link to what would best be described as "a chance for college money", and somebody goes totally off the rails about how they don't like art in STEM.

Let's take this in context, folks. If we are only focusing on STEM, I think there's a few scholarships that need to come off the table because they're "not STEM". And we don't want that, now, do we?

[Kartoffee]

I'm kind of mixed about this. On one hand, FIRST depends equally on art or photography. Yet, STEM is a very small part of a FIRST team. FIRST clearly is in favor of teams doing more outside of STEM, such as the Chairman's Award. Also, there is a certain weight about the term "science". Science is the laws of the universe. These laws have no room for error. Gravity isn't about 10m/s^2, it is 9.8, and will always be as long as the planet stays a closed system. The same can't be said for arts. Art is purely objective. The STEAM issue is like behavioral science; science is definite, but human behaviors aren't.

That being said, our team (Bionic Blackhawks) is very dependent on our student's concerted effort to produce a public image of our team at every event. I think that the art field is worthy of recognition, but I would not put it on the same plane as science and mathematics.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Kartoffee

Gravity isn't about 10m/s^2, it is 9.8, and will always be as long as the planet stays a closed system.

It's NOT 9.8. It's ABOUT 9.8. Surprise, gravity isn't uniform across the globe. There's small variations depending on where you are. As you can assume this does horrible things with things like accelerometers when you need precision.

[Kartoffee]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

It's NOT 9.8. It's ABOUT 9.8. Surprise, gravity isn't uniform across the globe. There's small variations depending on where you are. As you can assume this does horrible things with things like accelerometers when you need precision.

True, I just couldn't think of a better example.

[Gravity]

I personally think we should officially call it Communication Harp-playing Intelligence Education Fundraising Design Elevation Liberation Painting Harmonics and Imagination.

This way we incorporate all aspects of FIRST

[Chris is me]

It just feels like, of all the things FIRST does and can continue to do, we have so much more to worry about than the letters in our acronym or if we have to share a little grant money with a chronically underfunded portion of our educational system. I know it's possible to worry about several things at once, so this isn't really an argument, but we have some inspirin' to do.

Personally, if this leads to even a little bit more respect, appreciation, and incorporation of the arts into FIRST teams, I'm happy for the change. I'm done with edgy kids who think they're better than people with artistic sides, and who think they can just ignore that entire branch of human expression and still be the most effective scientists and engineers they can be.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

It just feels like, of all the things FIRST does and can continue to do, we have so much more to worry about than the letters in our acronym or if we have to share a little grant money with a chronically underfunded portion of our educational system. I know it's possible to worry about several things at once, so this isn't really an argument, but we have some inspirin' to do.

Personally, if this leads to even a little bit more respect, appreciation, and incorporation of the arts into FIRST teams, I'm happy for the change. I'm done with edgy kids who think they're better than people with artistic sides, and who think they can just ignore that entire branch of human expression and still be the most effective scientists and engineers they can be.

This spawned a thought for me... FIRST's acronym is, well, FIRST. STEM and STEAM are not FIRST acronyms. They aren't ones FIRST created or controlled. They are ones FIRST can use to help achieve its goals, though.